Chapter 7
Jackie was alone, and the big house seemed to echo and multiply her aloneness. With the young crowd gone in a last-minute crescendo of energy, it seemed as if a giant vacuum cleaner had been through the house, sucking it clean of life. After all the mindless, rootless, directionless young activity around her, Jackie thought she had never felt so alone. There had been one crisis.
"Mom," Bob had said, without preamble, as he sat down alone to breakfast. He had come downstairs long after the others had finished eating. "Mom, I have to ask you to do us a favor."
'What is it?" she asked, warily. She had learned long ago never to commit herself in advance, with Bob. He might want her to buy him the Whitestone Bridge.
"We need the station wagon." She noticed that he didn't say "your" station wagon. "The" station wagon made it community property, in Bob's mind.
"No," she said.
"How're we going to fit five guys into a Volkswagen?" Bob asked, plaintively. "There's Valerie's car."
'Tm going to ride with her only as far as her house, out on the North Shore. Then I'm going with the guys out to East Hampton."
"Can't Valerie drive you out?"
"She's got to go home. Jesus, what do you think she is anyway?"
That was a good question, Jackie thought. She'd never seen a girl with so much well-fucked contentment on her face as Valerie had had, that morning. She was almost smug about it, and Jackie was furious with her. Bob. Her baby.
"You're not even old enough to have a driver's license," Jackie said. "I don't want you driving the station wagon." Bob hunched his shoulders and screwed up his face when she mentioned his age, and Jackie remembered that he'd warned her he was eighteen, as far as Valerie was concerned. Valerie. That cradle snatcher.
"She can't hear me," Jackie said. "She went back upstairs."
"Well, who said anything about me driving? Andy's a good driver, and he'll do all the driving."
"How'm I supposed to get around?" Jackie asked him. "Call cabs all the time?"
"Andy'll leave you the Volkswagen," Bob explained. He was being patient with her. "What more do you need?"
"Nothing, I suppose," Jackie said. She'd lost again. She got her handbag from the table inside the door to the side porch, fished out her keys, took the car keys off the chain, and handed them to Bob.
"Just don't wrinkle it," she said.
"Thanks," Bob said, and got up from the table by straddling his chair and stepping over the back of it "The keys are in the Volks." He headed toward the front room, where the boys were waiting, jingling the keys in his hand.
He was getting cockier all the time, Jackie thought.
She wondered if the night upstairs with Valerie had anything to do with it.
Now, early in the afternoon, Jackie was starting to feel as lonely and empty as the house itself. There was lots to do, but she didn't feel like doing a thing. It was a hot day, warm even in the airy shaded house, and summer-afternoon ennui had her by the throat. Aside from house-straightening, there were calls to make, appointments to line up. The hell with it, she decided finally. I'll go to the club.
She was not a frequent visitor to the country club. She was practically the only single female member under seventy, and the other women did not make her feel welcome. They hated her, in fact, and took no pains to conceal the animosity. With the men, she got along fine, exchanging with them a great deal of what used to be known as "good-natured banter," in the Rover Boy books. When the men were without their wives, that is, she got along fine with them. When their wives were with them and Jackie was around, the men looked and acted extraordinarily tense, and gave the strong impression that they wanted very much to be somewhere else.
So Jackie didn't go to the club, often, but today she felt like it. She had no need to commune with the women. She could just take a dip in the pool and soak up some sun, by herself.
She dug out a bathing suit from a bottom drawer, found a beach towel and sunglasses and sun oil, and by the time she backed the Volkswagen out of the driveway her loneliness and her emptiness were forgotten. She was humming.
She changed into the suit at the club and walked slowly in the sun toward the pool, in her sandals, carrying the beach towel over one arm. Jackie's snug white suit was a one-piece job, almost translucent, cut high at the hipbones and slashed deep in front. Jackie did not like bikinis; considered them indecent, in fact.
There were three coveys of women along the sun side of the pool, away from the trees lining the golf course. Their conversation stopped when Jackie sauntered past, then started up again, in a different tone. Not one of them said hello. Jackie was elad, and even gladder that all the beach chairs on that side of the pool were taken.
There was one empty chair at the end near the diving board, and Jackie ambled toward it, passing two men off to one side, at a corner of the pool. There was a table between them, with tall drinks on it. The drinks looked good, to Jackie. She hadn't thought of that before. She knew one of the men, Tom something, but the other was a stranger, and she passed them without speaking.
"I want that for Christmas," Tom said, quite audibly as she passed them. She'd always liked Tom. He could be very funny.
"How would you like it wrapped?" his companion said, just as audibly.
"Not wrapped," Tom said. "I'll take it neat."
She stopped and turned and smiled at him.
"Is your tree up," she asked, "so early in the year?"
"My tree is always up," Tom said. He had a funny wav of laughing at himself, deep in his throat.
"It's an evergreen, then," Jackie said, laughing at him. "I should have known, you and your four kids."
"It's ever green for you, dear," Tom said. "Will you join us?" He dragged up a beach recliner without waiting for her answer, and she stretched out beside them, smiling.
"You're very gallant," she said. "You and your Christmas tree. Are those Tom Collinses you're drinking?"
"Yeah," Tom said. "Harold, here, is from Chicago, and they go for things like that in the provinces."
She smiled her hello at Harold.
I'll have a rickey, if you can find the man."
"There he is," Tom said, and waved the waiter over. I'll have a rickey, too. Time to get civilized."
Jackie was still amused by the idea of Tom and his Christmas tree when the drinks arrived. Tom was a youngish, very thin man with a sort of boyish joy about him, and she was pleased to be able to talk to him without his wife and brood of kids around. Harold was a tall, mild-looking man with rimless glasses who smiled gently and said almost nothing.
"I always have trouble with the stand on mine," Jackie said. "Every year, the damn thing tilts over further."
"Stand on what?" Tom asked her.
"Christmas tree," she said. "Remember talking about your Christmas tree?"
"Mine doesn't need any stand."
"You mean it stands up straight, all by itself?"
"Not straight," Tom said. "It hooks to the left a little, ever since I had it tattooed."
"Your Christmas tree?"
"Call it what you want."
Jackie laughed out loud. The idea of a tattooed cock pleased her tremendously.
"You're, just a sentimental fool," she said, "having it tattooed. I bet you cry when they sing 'Danny Boy.'"
"I do," Tom said. "But what's so sentimental about having the .thing tattooed?"
"A girl's name, what else?" Jackie said. She looked at him sideways. "like Ida. Or Flo. Or maybe Vi."
"Are you kidding? If I wanted to waste the space on a girl's name it would be something like Genevieve Casandra. Robsjohn-Giddings," he added expansively, and settled back in his beach chair, motioning the waiter for another round of drinks.
"Then it isn't a girl's name?" Jackie's curiosity was unquenched.
"Certainly not. I was born on the lower West Side, and all my sentimentality is for old Gotham town."
"So what's your tattoo?" Jackie persisted.
"New York harbor. With two Staten Island ferries, one coming and one going."
"I do admire a man who thinks big," Jackie said.
"On a clear day you can see Sandy Hook," Tom said.
Jackie had nothing to say. She lay back quietly in her chair, smiling, thinking about Sandy Hook.
"I had a tattoo once," Harold said, gently. Jackie looked at him closely for the first time, and realized that he had been humming quietly all through the conversation. He had the same bemused smile she had first seen him wearing and his rimless glasses seemed slightly fogged.
"What's your tattoo, Harold?" Jackie asked him. "Pike's Peak, I bet."
"Nothing so ambitious," Harold said. "A simple seascape, was all."
"You said 'was.' What happened to it?"
"It wore off," Harold said. He was still humming.
Jackie couldn't remember when she'd had so much good clean fun, drinking and talking laughing with Tom and Harold. After her fourth drink she got up, walked to the diving board, and plunged into the pool. She swam to the shallow end and back. She pulled herself out onto the edge of the pool without using the ladder, and was pleased that she could still do that. When she stood up, with her white translucent suit glued wetly to her, she noticed the women looking at her, and tossed her head. The hell with them. She knew that her pussy showed through the suit, dark and damp and friendly, and that her nipples were pinkly defined, but she didn't mind a bit.
Tom and Harold were watching her with open admiration when she walked back to them and sat down.
This waiter's awful damn slow," Tom said, clearing his throat. "Why don't we go to my place, where the drinks are always on the house? And you can set your own pace?"
"Good idea," Harold said.
Jackie had always been careful never to get involved with any of the men at the club, but today for some reason she didn't seem to care. For one tiling, she was having too good a time. For another, the episode with the Beaver Patrol two nights before seemed to have done something to her sense of discretion.
"I think it's a good idea, too," Jackie said. "Don't you two want to take a dip before we leave?"
"Might blur my tattoo," Tom said.
"I never touch water," Harold said, finishing his drink.
"I'll go up first and change," Jackie said. "Good idea. If we all leave together, there's no telling what the neighbors there will think." Tom nodded in the direction of the three knots of women stealing covert glances at them.
"Fuck the neighbors," Jackie said happily.
"What a depressing thought," Harold said.
Jackie was waiting, dressed in her short light cotton shift and high-heeled pumps and nothing else, when they came out on the club veranda, looking for her. With their hair combed now, in their crisp seersucker jackets, they were the picture of upper-middle-class respectability. Especially Harold, so tall and benevolent, with his rimless banker's glasses and benign smile. Them and their talk about tattoos, Jackie thought.
"It just occurred to me," Jackie said to Tom. 'Where's your family?"
"You trying to spoil my day? They're out in the Hamptons for two weeks."
"My son's out there somewhere, too," Jackie said, standing up. The men could not take their eyes off her. Jackie felt naked, but she was sure nothing showed.
"You have a son?" Tom said.
"You've met him. Bob. The tall dark-haired boy."
"Oh. Yes."
"Hard to believe," Harold said.
When Jackie got into the Volkswagen to follow them to Tom's house, Harold insisted on riding with her.
"In case you have a flat, or something," he said. He hummed all the way, gazing benignly at her legs. She had to be careful with the sldrt to keep him from seeing anything more than the smooth soft skin of her thighs. Everything in good time, she thought. She was enjoying herself thoroughly.
Tom's house was a long, low, ranch-type structure, set well back from the road. He led them directly downstairs, to a large cool pine-paneled room with a ping pong table conspicuous at one end and a bar, equally conspicuous, at the other.
"A room for both generations," Tom said expansively, motioning to the two ends of the room. "Which is yours?"
"I'm not much for games with paddles and balls," Jackie said.
"Don't talk dirty," Tom said. "You're a guest in this house." He went behind the bar, pulled out a tray of ice cubes from somewhere, and started making drinks. Jackie settled herself in a deep cool leather chair. She looked around at the comfortable clutter.
"I could settle down and spend a week in a room like this," she said.
"That's the best idea I've ever heard," Tom said. "Eleanor won't be back till a week from Thursday."
"I have to go back to Chicago tomorrow," Harold said sadly.
"Don't let me keep you," Tom said.
"Now, boys." Jackie took the drink Tom handed her, and sipped. It was much stronger than the drinks at the club. It suited her fine. She was filled with contentment.
Three drinks later, Harold was sitting on the carpet in front of her chair, stroking her calves, touching the softness above the inner bend of her knees. Watching them, Tom suddenly put his drink down on the bar and walked behind her chair. Tentatively, he slipped both hands inside the front of her dress. She didn't stop him. He cupped both globes in his hands and ran his fingers up over the nipples. She could feel them tightening, comings erect under his touch. He pinched the two hard, red juttings, gently, between thumb and forefinger.
"You have the most marvelous legs I've ever seen," Harold said, and bent forward to kiss the inside of one knee.
"Would you like to see more of them?" Jackie asked. It was a rhetorical question. The hem of her shift was already near the tops of her thighs.
Harold didn't answer. He just looked at her, still smiling that benign smile. His glasses were steamy.
Slowly, deliberately, smiling at him the while, she raised one knee, swinging her foot from side to side. She raised the knee higher, and very slowly moved her leg over until it rested over the arm of the chair, and felt her skirt ride back toward her hips.
Harold gazed down the smooth soft inner swell of her thighs to where the soft, dusky-pink lips of her cunt opened in the fur and smiled at him. Jackie slid forward and raised her other leg over the other arm of the chair, opening her cunt to him. The petals of her flower, she knew, would be pouting, pink and moist.
Harold began kissing his way up her inner thighs, tickling her with the tip of his tongue. Tom's hands were working furiously at her breasts, squeezing and kneading, pinching the hard angry buds of her nipples. Before she had slid forward, Jackie had felt the hard demand of his cock against the back of her head.
Harold got to his knees between her legs. The tip of his tongue touched the soft warm petals of her cunt, and a thrill started through her, the thrill she'd been building toward all afternoon. He reached his arms around his thighs and opened her cunt-lips further with his fingers. His mouth covered her whole pink pussy, his hard tongue probed up through the inner lips, and he began to suck her cunt like a starved man, groaning with delight. He gobbled and sucked and licked and groaned, and she found herself groaning with him. Without interrupting his licking and sucking, she closed her warm thighs around his head, and urged his mouth and tongue deeper into her cunt, pressing her heels against his back.
"Jesus," Tom said, "do something for me. Jackie. Please." He leaned over the chair.
She unzipped his fly quickly, and a truly magnificent rod popped out, long, thick, red, and pulsing. There was no sign of a tattoo, Jackie noticed inanely. But it did hook to the left. She opened her mouth to take in the big purple head, tickled down the under-shaft with her tongue, and began to suck his cock in earnest, as if she herself were hungry. She heard her own lips making greedy sucking sounds around the hard shaft, and all the while Harold was making slurping noises as he sucked away at her flaming cunt.
Jackie's hips were grinding, her pussy palpitating with nothing but joy, but she wanted more. She wanted the sensation to go deeper, much deeper. As deep, she knew, as the big wet cock in her mouth could carry it-and she wanted it soon, as soon as possible. And as soon as the had the thought, she knew a way. She took one last deep suck on Tom's cock, and drew her mouth away, holding it with her hand around its thick base.
"Tom?" she said, smiling at him with wet red lips.
"Don't stop now. Please."
"I want you inside me."
"I was inside you. Inside your mouth."
"I want your cock inside me. In my cunt."
Without speaking, Tom nodded at Harold. They could see the top of his head and his forehead and that was all. He had taken off his glasses, and he was licking and sucking and eating away at Jackie's cunt like a man gone mad.
"I can take care of him at the same tune," Jackie said. There's a way."
"Sure there's a way," Tom said. "You were just doing it."
There's a better way. Better for all of us."
"What could be better?" Tom said. "But you can show me."
"Is there a big bed upstairs?" The biggest."
"Let's go. Right now. Right this second."
Jackie put her fingers gently against Harold's forehead, and he raised his head and looked at her. His eyes had trouble focusing, without the glasses, and his open mouth and his cheeks were glistening wet.
"Yes?" he said. He smiled his benign smile at her.
"We're going upstairs now," she said. T have something for you."
"You sure have," Harold said. He leaned forward and kissed her cunt, wetly, then got to his feet. He was still fully dressed, and his seersucker jacket, wrinkled now, looked so incongruous that Jackie almost laughed aloud.
The corner bedroom?" Harold said to Tom, and when Tom nodded he turned to the stairs.
"In my youth they called me The Pathfinder," he said. "Let me lead the way."
He bounded up the stairs three steps at a time. like one of my Beaver Patrol, Jackie thought. It's a wonder what a hard-on does for a man.
Jackie followed slowly up the stairs, leading Tom with her hand around his cock. On the third step, his hand went under her shift to stroke her round buttocks, and his middle finger slid underneath and into the wet underfolds of her twat. Her hand still clutched his undiminished pole, and his finger was still exploring her warm wet soft little cave, when they got to the bedroom.
Harold stood by the side of the wide expanse of bed. He had thrown the spread down, and stood completely naked, his long cock standing out stiff and proud, with a slight curve upwards. It was slim, compared to Tom's thick shaft, as Jackie had hoped. Had almost known, somehow. It looked very young, for a man Harold's age, as it stood so rigidly curving up, pulsing slightly. Harold had his glasses on again, and he had wiped them. There was no trace of steam.
"Find some vaseline in the bathroom, Harold," she said. "I want you to use the back door. If you'd like to," she added.
"Up your ass?" Harold said. "Love to."
He was back in ten seconds with a jar of vaseline in his hand. The head of his prick was smeared but unbowed. Without another word, Jackie pulled off her shift and dropped it on the floor, kicked off her shoes, and got up on the bed on her hands and knees, her lovely white ass elevated and inviting.
She was conscious of Tom standing by the far side of the bed, his stiff throbbing cock looking red and angry with the waiting.
"Just wait one minute, Tom," she said. "One minute."
Then Harold was mounted on the bed behind her, his hands reaching around to squeeze her breasts. She felt his curving cock sliding up and down in the crevice between the heavenly white hills of her buttocks, seeking an entrance. She reached around with one hand and guided the taut eager pointed head to her welcoming hole. Harold pushed gently, and the head slid inside. Then, with one strong thrust, he imbedded his cock deep, far up inside her ass, his stomach flat against her cheeks, his balls bumping the soft underfolds of her cunt. She groaned with pleasure.
"Hold it there, Harold," she said. "Keep that lovely prick tight up my ass, all the way." Harold didn't have to be told. His hands were at her hips, holding the connection tight.
Together, they rolled slowly over on their side, and Jackie raised her top leg, opening her cunt for Tom. He lay on the bed on his side, and guided the deep purple head of his long thick cock to the swollen, open warm lips. They seemed to envelop it, sucking it in with a suction all their own. She felt the great tool slide up into her, bearing against the stiffness of Harold's hard staff, with only a thin wall of membrane between the two parallel sliding shafts.
When Tom was embedded to the hilt, as if by some prearranged signal, he and Harold started to withdraw slowly, in unison, until only the heads remained inside her-Harold held by the tight constriction of her stretched, sensation-filled ass-hole, Tom's by the throat by the inner lips of insatiable cunt. Then they plunged, simultaneously, driving deeply up inside her, their stiffness pushing against each other along the channels of her deepest joy.
For a delirious moment, Jackie thought she was going to faint. But she rallied, waving her free leg in her ecstasy.
"More," was all she could manage to groan. "More." They gave her more, driving up into her with a slow rhythm that made her think wildly of waves swelling and breaking on a beach. Again, again, again, they fucked up into her, in exquisite unison, their balls making slapping sounds against each other and against the tiny pink peninsula of flesh between her open orifices.
She didn't want it to end, ever. She reached the peak of orgasm once, came off it in shuddering spasms, and came again, and again, and again, and then found herself in one perpetual, open-end orgasm. She knew her mouth was open, and she heard the sound of groans and screams but she was not conscious of making the sounds herself. Along with the slow delirious rhythm of waves, she had the disembodied sensation of being underwater.
"Now, Harold?" she heard Tom say, from way off somewhere, and the rhythm increased, and she gritted her teeth to keep from screaming out her agony of delight.
Even the new rhythm kept up for a long time, with Jackie staying at a plateau of orgasm-and when they did come, shooting their hot juices up inside her simultaneously, she came with them, a pinnacle of orgasm on top of orgasm. She shuddered, again and again, as the inner spasms kept up, tearing at her insides until she thought she would come apart.
They stayed inside her, their long cocks motionless, as little by little the spasms subsided. When she was completely limp, almost comatose, they withdrew, slowly, gently, lovingly.
"Jesus," Tom said, rolling over on his back.
"Me, too," Jackie said. Her eyes were closed.
"Chicago," Harold said, "was never like this."
They were back downstairs, naked except for their shoes. Jackie found walking difficult, and felt so unsteady on the stairs that she held on to the railing.
"You've made me old before my time," she said.
"It doesn't show," Harold said, from the foot of the stairs.
"Never mind," she said. "It's a lovely way to grow old."
She went back to the leather chair and sprawled in it, one long luscious leg over the arm. The leather was cool and soothing against her bare skin. Tom made drinks again, and handed her one.
"When I think," he said, "that I didn't want to go to the club today. I only went to entertain my guest, here." He grinned at Harold.
"Consider me entertained," Harold said.
They had several drinks, sometimes in silence, sometimes talking and laughing quietly. Jackie had never felt so relaxed.
Slowly, then, almost infinitesimally, like water in a glass under a dripping faucet, she felt lust rising in her again. No, Jackie, you've had enough for one night. These poor guys are exhausted. Forget it Resign yourself. Think pure thoughts.
But miraculously, her feelings transmitted themselves to the men. Or lust hit them, too, independently.
Tom was sitting in front of her now, where Harold had been, and she still had one leg draped lazily over the arm of the chair. Surprisingly, considering her thoughts at the moment he leaned forward and gently kissed the open damp lips of her cunt letting his tongue caress the soft pink lips.
"Poor pussy," he said. He leaned forward again, and his tongue found the stiffening bud of her clitoris. He smiled up at her, his lips damp.
"And how about your poor little ass-hole?" he asked.
She hesitated, but only for a second, then put her hands in front of her knees and held them high and apart.
Gently, again, he leaned forward, and lovingly licked the crack between her buttocks. His tongue found the tight little aperture, licked it, slid slowly inside. The water in her lust-glass was rising faster.
Harold was standing beside her then, his cock coming slowly erect. She turned her head and took it softly between her lips.
That's a good girl," Harold said. She put a hand under the limp weight of his balls, and lifted. Her little finger found his ass-hole, and slipped inside. His cock became fully rigid, and she began to suck it with a slow, steady rhythm, her head moving back and forth, her mouth tasting and devouring his long slender shaft.
"Jackie?" Harold said. His hand was on the back of her head. Tom was making slurping sounds now as he sucked at her cunt.
She drew her head back from the cock in her mouth and looked up, the tip of her tongue touching the softness just under the head.
"What?" she said.
"Can I go in the front door this time."
"Absolutely, Harold," she said. "You don't even have to ring the bell."
It was a long, wonderful, memorable night for Jackie. For Tom and Harold, too.
Harold looked very tired when he left to catch the plane to Chicago in the morning. Tired, but happy.
His smile was as benign as ever.